Keyforge, and the time nobody had any clue what the rules of the game were thanks to a cyborg owl. [Hobby Drama Archive]

For several years, a KeyForge player soho_jin has documented KeyForge's more dramatic and interesting moments for the r/HobbyDrama subreddit. While the stories he tells involve low points for the game, he always uses them to point out the best of KeyForge and the community that keeps it going. KeyForge Public Radio is proud to archive these important pieces of KeyForge writing, with permission from the author. The original version of this post is here; the below post is unmodified from its original posting on February 27, 2021.

I love Keyforge.

That said, the game hasn’t been without its share of issues. As mentioned in previous posts, there was a time when Bait and Switch utterly dominated the game’s meta, and combo decks involving Library Access resulted in one of the most boring grand finals in card game history. These led to subsequent errata, and to this day these remain the only two cards in the game’s history to receive officially sanctioned nerfs.

If I was to name the darkest era in Keyforge’s history (from a personal perspective), it would be a little while after the release of the game’s second set, Age of Ascension. You might expect this to be due to the release of some new, all powerful meta-busting card like in my previous posts. After all, we saw the likes of Heart of The Forest, which is possibly the most hated card in all of Keyforge, with its ability to stall games and create timeout situations. Or perhaps it was Martian Generosity, which many in the community consider to be the most powerful card in the game. To this day, the set is somewhat divisive, with some liking the more complex strategies and greater focus on board control, while some felt it was too slow and lacked the punchier, fast-paced gameplay of the first set. Some relished the greater balancing between the houses (which to this day makes AoA the most reliable set for sealed events) while others felt it was weaker on average than the previous set, leading to many competitive players mostly ignoring it. (AoA would eventually prove much more effective against future sets, though)

However, none of those things are tied to what I consider the darkest period in the game’s history. It had nothing to do with overpowered cards or toxic behavior. Heck, some of the more casual Keyforge players might not have had any clue what was going on. But take it from me, many within the community were gripped by a desperately troubling problem. One that almost had me giving up the game entirely. You see, for a period of around a month or so…

Nobody knew how the game was supposed to be played.

The Rules of The Game

To recap from last time, the basic premise of Keyforge is as follows: In order to win, you must forge 3 keys. Each key costs 6 ӕmber (pronounced ‘amber’), which you can gain through certain card bonuses, or by using creatures to perform the ‘reap’ action. If you have enough ӕmber at the start of your turn, you forge a key. There are other intricacies and various aspects of play, but to put it simply: play cards, get ӕmber, forge keys, be the first to forge 3 of them. Decks are sold sealed and whole as opposed to being constructed through booster packs, and every single deck in the world is unique.

Form and Function

Successful theming in games is generally understood as adhering to an understandable logic. For a hypothetical scenario, imagine a tabletop game where you play the role of a farmer making money through raising chickens and selling eggs. You could trade grain tokens to keep your chickens alive, roll dice to determine how many eggs you produce based on how many chickens you have, and use tiles to extend your farm over subsequent turns. Sounds okay so far, right? And what if – bear with me – sometimes your chickens would lay potatoes? What if any time you sell a dozen eggs, it sends a tornado to destroy your opponent’s farm? What if having fewer chickens resulted in more eggs? What if you could only get grain by planting oranges, and you had to kill foxes to steal their oranges from them?

Would it do well for fighting games to have their combatants clutch their knees in agony after receiving a roundhouse kick to the face? How about a first-person shooter where shooting someone in the foot instantly kills them, but they can take a thousand shots to the forehead? Oh, what about a racing game where you steer with the gearstick and accelerate by tilting your seat forward? Or a theme park sim where you gain money by drowning guests?

Of course, games are just a series of rules and code that come together to produce results. If a pistol does ten times the damage of a grenade launcher, well, that’s just the rules of the game, so you need to adapt. But that doesn’t stop people from crying foul when things don’t make sense. It doesn’t matter how strategic or deep the gameplay might be, you’d be forgiven for being turned off by a complete disregard of perceived logic. This is going to be less important to some, who might simply view a particular game much as they would abstract strategy – like chess or checkers – and simply alter their play to the rules as they are presented to them. I’m not here to dictate what everyone should and shouldn’t find merit in, but it can’t be denied that for many, effective theming matters.

And so we return to Keyforge, which for the most part, always did an excellent job of sticking to this particular design mantra. The cards on each side of the table are a direct representation of two opposing battlelines of creatures with pieces of technology or magical charms. Players can generally deduce the meaning of a card and its effects through logical assumption based on what the cards represent, and the consequences of each action make sense.

For example: Safe Place. Use its action ability and you can move one ӕmber onto it, while still being able to forge keys using the ӕmber stored there. In the context of the game’s rules, its use is obvious. That ӕmber has been stored in a ‘safe place.’ It’s been hidden away. It means the opponent can’t remove any of that ӕmber unless they destroy the artifact itself. The card art even shows someone hiding a chunk of ӕmber in a little cubby hole. Logically and thematically, by name and design, it should be obvious how this card functions, and the rules of the game follow that. But see, that’s not always been the case with every card, which has led to some errata.

For All Intents and Purposes

Among the first errata the game ever saw was for Biomatrix Backup. It’s an upgrade which must be attached to a creature, and its original text reads: This creature gains, “Destroyed: You may put this creature into its owner's archives.” Seems logical enough, right? You obviously want to attach it to an important creature so that if your opponent destroys it, you can decide to archive it, thus giving you a chance to play it on a future turn. Brilliant! The name of the card fits this idea well, and is absolutely, unequivocally, what the intended purpose of the card was from the very beginning.

The catch? The rules said otherwise.

Basically, according to Da Rules, if your opponent destroyed that creature they could decide to just… not let you archive it. This made the card almost completely pointless, as the only way you could archive the creature would be to destroy it on your own turn, but there’d be no point in doing that if the whole point was to keep the creature in play for as long as possible, and if you did happen to have a creature with a beneficial Destroyed effect, putting Biomatrix Backup on the creature would likely put you at a disadvantage because if your opponent destroyed it they could just choose to let you archive it instead of gaining that benefit… and oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed.

This meant that in any kind of official tournament environment, the card’s obvious and logical intended use would be ignored – rendering it useless – all because the very specific series of words on the card didn’t line up exactly with the very specific series of words of the official rules to give the intended effect. This was news to some players, who unfortunately played the card in its expected role and were given the bad news by the official judges.

Thankfully, Fantasy Flight Games quickly took notice and provided an errata for the card, which basically amounted to “Of course we wanted people to be able to archive their creatures! What did you think was the point of the card? Isn’t the name a dead giveaway? Come on!”

Another instance of this was Drummernaut, which, much like its forbearer Wardrummer, had the effect of returning friendly creatures to your hand. From a thematic perspective we can assume they’re using their drums to rally the troops, allowing them to fall back and redeploy, which is the obvious intended purpose of the cards. A shame then, that according to Da Rules, under tournament setting, if you played Drummernaut without having any other giants on the field, he would enter play, stand on the battleline for a mere nanosecond before immediately returning to your hand, having been called back to camp by his own… drums. “Rally the troops! Wait a minute… I’m the troops! Fall back! Stop talking to yourself! Fall back!” And you could do this again. And again. With Drummernaut returning to your hand each time, never being played. After all, that was simply the result of taking the text on its card as literally as possible within the context of the rules. However, this bonkers ruling was not intended and was quickly remedied by an errata.

As expected, many players didn’t like the idea of the game being akin to manipulating equations and values in the confines of a program, instead relishing thematically consistent play. i.e. These are my creatures, they fight and they do things, I play cards with effects, and these things makes sense. Thankfully for us, the devs at Fantasy Flight Games had made it pretty clear that this was their intention too, and we could all look forward to playing the version of the game that we all wanted to play, with no confusion or illogical outcomes, and any unfortunate inconsistencies that slip through the cracks during production would be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly, leaving pedantic tryhard ruminations in the dust. And that’s how it always was.

Or… maybe not.

The Archimedes Principle (or lack, thereof)

Among the various tales from the community, there were whispers in the wind about a judge who came up with this rather strange ruling for Archimedes. “Apparently, rumor has it, (chuckles) that he thought if your battleline has Archimedes and gets hit with a board wipe (snorts) you get to archive all of your other creatures! Every last one! (laughs while shaking head) Which is ridiculous, because Archimedes would obviously only archive its neighbors, as stated clearly on the card. (slaps knee) Oh, if only the devs could hear about this wild, crazy, nonsensical idea that they obviously never intended. They’d be rolling their eyes for hours.”

You see, while the game was in its infancy, there weren’t exactly a ton of people who knew all the ins and outs of how the game was played, which led to various stories of judges at local events coming up with some odd rule interpretations. This may have been, in part, due to the game’s supposed similarities with Magic: The Gathering (also considering that Keyforge was created by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic) when in actual fact, Keyforge is nothing like Magic. Aside from the fact that in both games you play creatures and artifacts, the way the two are played is radically different. It’s not uncommon for people with a Magic background to make plenty of mistakes when first playing Keyforge. (Raises hand) As the saying goes, old habits die hard. “What do you mean you don’t untap your cards at the start of the turn?” Since many people with a vested interest in card games hailed from Magic, this apparently held true for judges, too. As such, it was commonly accepted that judges – at least at a local level – could be prone to making mistakes every now and then, and the second set had introduced a trove of new cards with a variety of effects, opening the game up to all sorts of new interactions.

With this in mind, as the tale of Archimedes and his all-reaching archive potential across an infinite battleline spread throughout the community, many were quick to dismiss it. The opposing argument was that “the rules don’t say that that isn’t the way it’s done”, but Fantasy Flight would surely do what they always did and make a statement, clearing the whole thing up.

And they did.

By confirming that this crazy and unintuitive ruling was correct and had been their intention all along.

I did not take this well.

To put this into perspective, imagine the following scenario: Archimedes, the great cyborg owl, uses his abilities to protect the two creatures that stand either side of him, ensuring that they can be regenerated from the archive should they be destroyed. Easy to understand, right? Let’s change the scenario up a bit. Let’s take the official ruling given by Fantasy Flight and portray it in the realms of a mystical world, so we can all understand it better.

Let me tell you a tale, my child, of Archimedes’ true power.

The Tale of Brave Sir Archimedes

Archimedes, the great cyborg owl, is flanked by a platoon of creatures – twelve of them, to be exact – and the unfortunate happens. An accursed gateway to a hellish realm of teeth and claws has been unlocked, and this Unlocked Gateway, at the hands of the archon calling upon the powers of the demon race Dis, pulls forth every creature on the battlefield into its maw, about to destroy them all in an instant.

And so… they do a little dance.

Archimedes, with the last of his strength, sends the remnants of the two comrades beside him to the archive, wings flailing as he accepts his death. But wait! While those two were sucked into the gateway, two others have appeared. Is it…? Can it be!? Why, yes! EVERYDAY THEY’RE SHUFFLING! The great platoon of goblins, mutants, scientists, witches and treefolk shimmy across the battlefield towards Archimedes, shaking what their mother gave them until they reach his side! The Murmook, being a crab, shimmies effortlessly! Archimedes, with the last of the last of his strength, sends the remnants of another two comrades to the archives. But they shimmy more and more towards him, Archimedes swiveling about like the scissor man from Clock Tower, still living, in a state of extended death throes, his comrades being pulled into the gateway just before two new comrades shimmy on in to take their place. “More!?” Archimedes screams, surprised that the others have out-shimmied the gateway to hell and that he remains miraculously unscathed. But he does not question it! And on and on it goes until every last creature manages to shimmy to his side just in time, Archimedes using the last of the last of the last of the last of his strength (what an amazing coincidence he managed to hold on for this long and to be able to use his powers while being cast into the hellish depths!) to send all twelve of them to the archives, before finally being pulled into the gateway himself. A heroic sacrifice. A grand death for a grand owl.

If all that sounds ridiculous, you’re not alone in thinking that. But I suppose the question is, did this make Archimedes overpowered?

No.

While this ruling definitely made Archimedes stronger than he would otherwise be, there were still plenty of other cards considered to be just as – if not more – powerful, and even if the ruling were to be ignored, cards like Bouncing Deathquark could still result in more or less the same effect as any other board wipe. The community response was varied, with some finding the ruling outrageous and demanding change, some begrudgingly accepting it, while some didn’t seem to mind. At least with Fantasy Flight making an official statement, there was no confusion or debate to be had on the matter. Everyone was on the same page, playing by the same rules. Not everyone was happy with it, but at least things could get back to the way they were, right?

Wrong.

You see, this was merely the beginning. Fantasy Flight’s explanation might have cleared one issue up, but it sprouted a thousand more. This ruling served as an inspiration, offering new possibilities beyond logic. If the shenanigans of Archimedes were possible, and destroyed effects could be lined up in such a way to create a myriad of effects and combos, what else was possible? No longer could anyone simply chime in with “just think about it logically” or “that’s obviously not how Fantasy Flight intended it”, because their stance on Archimedes had called that mindset into question. Things that had been completely overlooked beforehand were now perceived in a new light. The once pristine framework of the game had started to crack, and in its wake, the world of Keyforge was thrown into chaos.

Schrodinger’s Dust Imp

It wasn’t long before posts began popping up offering hypothetical scenarios involving destroyed effects. This wasn’t completely new. The community had obviously shared thoughts and posed questions to each other if ever they were unsure about something. But this time… things were different.

Let’s take the following example:

Brend The Fanatic is equipped with Soulkeeper, and sits next to Archimedes. In this instance Brend has 3 destroyed effects:

- Steal 3 ӕmber.

- Destroy the most powerful enemy creature.

- Archive this creature.

Sounds pretty simple, right? If he’s destroyed, you steal 3, destroy the most powerful enemy, then archive. Job done. But… what if you don’t do that. You have to trigger the destroyed effects in order before Brend leaves the table, as per the rules, right? So… why not get creative?

Okay, first let’s steal 3. Now let’s destroy a creature. Okay, now let’s steal another 3. Brend is still in play, right? Hmm, some other creature just shimmied its way towards Archimedes. Let’s destroy another creature and then set off his third destroyed effect. More shimmying.. Oh, then he is just about to get archived, but we trigger his other destroyed effects again before he actually gets archived. Why not? After all, the abstract concept that is Brend The Fanatic is attempting to leave the battlefield so we recheck the board state after each action to see he remains on the board so we reorder the effects as he gains them, after each equation is completed. That means we’ve stolen 9 ӕmber, destroyed 3 creatures, plus we get to archive Brend for a future turn, all in one fell swoop.

Does that sound ridiculous? Crazy? Absurd? Oh, of course! That’s what many would say immediately upon witnessing such an event. How could Brend, a creature that has just been blown up, trigger all manner of effects, including triple that of his signature death throes? It makes no sense, of course. And so, people checked the rulebook. And what they found after scouring every single sentence was…

Nothing. No answer. No clear guidance. No explanation. Nothing that either confirmed or denied such claims. The Archimedes ruling sure sounded like Destroyed effects could change and stack in various ways, but without any concrete frames of reference, all that was left was for the community to bicker over what the rules should be, with nothing to reach an answer with.

There were countless other scenarios that people put forward. What if Duma The Martyr is next to Dust Imp, and a board wipe hits? Well, Dust Imp gives you 2 ӕmber upon being destroyed, then Duma heals it back up, right? Or was that wrong? Could destroyed effects be triggered if the creature remained fit and healthy? Could destroyed creatures be healed back to health? Again, nobody knew the answers. We had to guess.

What about if two opposing creatures each have Soulkeeper equipped and are the only two creatures on the battlefield? Suppose you attack one with the other and they both die, so I trigger this effect to kill the opponent’s creature, which triggers its effect to kill my creature, which triggers its effect to kill the opponent’s creature, which triggers its effect to kill my creature, which triggers… forever and ever. To be locked at death’s edge for all eternity as an infinite number of destroyed effects stack on top of each other until the end of time. No other choice but to walk away from the game and declare a stalemate. Sure, that might sound ridiculous and unintuitive, but who’s to say that isn’t how it works? The rules sure didn’t say otherwise.

What about playing Jargogle with a copy of Life For A Life underneath it? You attack a creature and Jargogle is destroyed in the process. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain!” you shout, reaching for the card underneath it. The card instructs you to sacrifice a creature for its effect. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain!” you cry again, sacrificing the lifeless remains of Jargogle… again. Sure, that might sound unintuitive and illogical…

But we just. Didn’t. Know.

The very rules of the game had failed us.

“A creature can be destroyed but not defeated.”

And on it went. It seemed like every day, there was a new scenario for people to argue over. There were those who relished in being able to create elaborate and powerful combos, while others detested what was seen as a breaking down of the game’s logic. Creatures weren’t “attempting to leave the battlefield.” They were being splatted by an angry giant! But of course, there was nothing to prove these ideas either way, and asserting “just think logically” meant nothing now that Archimedes’ intended purpose had been confirmed. Despite the fact nobody knew the rules of the game at this point, official events was mostly held with this new and outlandish state of play. “Hey, this is how it works in [insert other card game]!”

It should be noted that this didn’t necessarily result in a sudden rise of overpowered combos completely dominating the competitive scene. The prevalence of decks that allowed for such interactions was still low, and creating the perfect scenario to let Brend The Fanatic steal 9 ӕmber would be difficult to set up in any deck, even if the tools were there. But even so, the fact that you could come up against them in a small percentage of games was enough to make people worry. After all, the infamous LANS combo wasn’t actually that prevalent in competitive play, but whenever it did crop up, matches could likely be turned into bouts of solitaire and token-counting.

Amongst the detractors to these rulings, the main worry was that Fantasy Flight either agreed with them, or would have their hands full trying to figure out errata for each card that could possibly be implicated. As players scoured their decks, looking for the next big thing among the infinite possibilities, there didn’t seem to be an end in sight. If this continued with the release of the third set, there was no telling what else we would have to contend with.

Fantasy Flight were silent for what felt like an age while players who were once enamored and optimistic became bitter and despondent. Forum posts became filled with rants and ravings from those who felt that the game had been ruined, while others told them to stop complaining about “thematic logic” and just adapt to the new rulings. (Even if the ‘new rulings’ were based on different versions of the rules that had no definitive answer either way.) Almost every discussion devolved into arguments about how the game should be played, with no winners but plenty of losers. The community was in complete disarray. Nobody had the answers, everything was based on conjecture, and various conflicting interpretations of the rules ran rampant.

Some begrudgingly accepted the way things were. Some satisfied themselves with house rules that ignored the likes of Archimedes and (as I like to call it) Schrodinger’s Dust Imp. Some chose to stop playing the game while they waited for the mess to be cleared up. Some (as one commenter stated on my previous post) simply walked away from Keyforge entirely, too distressed by what the game had become.

As for myself, I came pretty close to leaving it all behind, spending more time complaining in the Keyforge subreddit than I did actually playing it. I liked Keyforge for what it used to be: an easy to understand, intuitive experience that was held tight by common sense, while also allowing for exciting effects in a radical world filled with magic and mayhem. I hated what it had become. I hated Archimedes more than I ever hated Bait and Switch, more than any card that I have ever hated. (Yes, even more than Tribute.) I had gone from being giddy with excitement to red with rage. And just like many others, I hoped desperately for a reprieve, else the game we loved be destroyed forever. Time went on, and still nobody knew what the future held. Would this be the death of the game? Would Keyforge be doomed to fail like so many other card games before it?

Yowamushi Backpedal

Eventually, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of a slew of errata pouring out for the myriad of cards, Fantasy Flight enacted a monumental backpedal by rewriting the core ruleset of the game. The term “tagged for destruction” created a new norm that both simplified proceedings and retracted many of the unintuitive rulings of days gone past.

To put it simply, it stated that card effects that either destroyed or dealt damage to multiple creatures would have its effects occur at the exact same time for each creature involved. Previously, the active player could dole out the damage in the order of their choosing across the creatures on the field, potentially to some benefit, but now the effects were to be treated as if they all happened simultaneously.

It confirmed that creatures could not be healed once tagged for destruction, reversing the Schrodinger’s Dust Imp scenario. Destroyed effects could only be triggered a maximum of once as opposed to stacking and duplicating them in complex ways to gain insane benefits. Creatures that had been tagged for destruction could not be targets for effects (again, they’re not “attempting to leave the battlefield”, they’ve just been mauled by a bear!) meaning the likes of Jargogle couldn’t be sacrificed twice in a row. And perhaps most importantly of all, the Archimedes ruling they had so fervently asserted was now impossible, putting an end to creatures shimmying from one end of the battlefield to the other. No longer was there any doubt over how the game was supposed to be played, and thematic logic won out.

The reaction from the community was of (mostly) relief. People could finally get back to simply playing the game rather than arguing over how it should be played. Now we could discuss how Shadows was still overpowered, or, in fact, how Shadows had been nerfed too hard and was now terrible. Was Untamed the worst house in the set? Or one of the best? Was Mars weak, or overpowered? To this day, the opinions on house strength in AoA is by far the most varied of any set currently released, with seemingly no clear consensus whatsoever. Quite fitting for the most divisive (yet ironically most balanced) set the game has seen. Since then, well… things have never looked better. (Okay, so Tribute did come out in the third set, but…) While the game will never be perfect, the darkest days were truly over.

And I am crossing my fingers with all my might that the fifth set won't cause this statement to end up on r/agedlikemilk. You'd better have a plan for that trojan horse artifact, Fantasy Flight! Nobody wants to have another Bad Penny on our hands! (I'm sure it'll be fine.)

Just before I finish, I’d like to address something. I did get a few comments after my previous posts from Keyforge players who felt that their opinions hadn’t been properly represented. I should point out that not everyone was up in arms over Bait and Switch or Library Access, and of course, some were in favor of the original Archimedes ruling and the subsequent Schrodinger’s Dust Imp combos. I apologize if people felt as if I had made out my own feelings to represent that of the entire community, or if I was undermining the prevalence of differing opinions regarding these subjects. Far be it from me to preside over others with an objective "correct" opinion.

As for future Keyforge content, I can’t promise any new posts for a while, unfortunately. A few people have mentioned the “turn your deck over” scandal concerning a particular pro player and the subsequent fallout, and while it’s definitely something I’d been considering writing about, (because it is pretty juicy!) I have other writing projects that I’ve been neglecting and feel I should get back to those.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you feel like giving Keyforge a go, I’d highly recommend it.